I found an excellent article that pretty much exposes the Climate Change Denial groups as for what they are: retreaded apparatchiks that "promoted" the idea that there was no link to getting cancer from smoking cigarettes.
It completely makes sense and would make for a great documentary comparing the two "marketing campaigns". Perhaps that's in the works somewhere.
An excellent article illustrates this obvious conclusion:
The fact is that the critics — who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks — are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.
Many books have recently documented the games played by the climate-change deniers. Merchants of Doubt(
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1596916109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266581877&sr=8-1), a new book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway set for release in mid-2010, will be an authoritative account of their misbehaviour. The authors show that the same group of mischief-makers, given a platform by the free-market ideologues of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, has consistently tried to confuse the public and discredit the scientists whose insights are helping to save the world from unintended environmental harm.
Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organisations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulphur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing "acid rain." Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/feb/19/climate-change-sceptics-scienceThen there is this chilling assessment about climate change denial:
Reviewing the continued campaign by climate change skeptics, David McKnight, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales (Australia), notes that there several reasons why companies such as Exxon have had some success playing the global warming denial card. "First, the implications of the science are frightening. Shifting to renewable energy will be costly and disruptive. Second, doubt is an easy product to sell. Climate denial tells us what we all secretly want to hear. Third, science is portrayed as political orthodoxy rather than objective knowledge, a curiously postmodern argument," he writes. While the tobacco industry is often referred to as the template for the fossil fuel industry's campaign, McKnight argues that there is an important distinction. "There are no 'smoke-free areas' on the planet.
Climate denial may turn out to be the world's most deadly PR campaign," he concludes.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_changeMore links:
Here is a treasure chest of the Tobacco companies and their strategies that tried to lie about second-hand smoke and cigarette smoking causing cancer:
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/Climate Change Denial Groups:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_Climate_CoalitionAn EXCELLENT source on Global Warming sceptics:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_warming_skeptics
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
